Edward
M. Baldwin, America’s education novelist,
will speak to the North Florida Writers
on Saturday, Jan. 10. He is the author of the
“Duval County books,” classroom dramas set
in a fictitious Duval County school
district. “Learnt,” his first Duval County
novel, met with repeated praise from
reviewers. “Victims of Shakespeare,” the
next book in the series, is scheduled for
release in 2015, followed by “Teacher
Deficit Disorder” and “Gun Point Average”
respectively.

He
also writes short stories with teachers,
students, and parents being his primary
audience. “Parent Plots, Teacher Tales &
Student Stories” was recently published. As
an English Education graduate of the
University of North Florida, he has served
as a high school English teacher and
literacy coordinator. He has also helped
people pursue their goals by serving as an
adjunct professor for an adult education
program, where he taught English and a
“Strategies for Success” course.

He
is an avid tennis player and believes that
it is one of the most demanding sports on
the planet, comparing it to the martial arts
that he used to study diligently. He spends
much of his time visiting public schools,
coaching tennis, tutoring aspiring writers,
and, of course, writing.

He
is the editor of three blogs: Baldwin
Memorable Moments, Tips to Treasure (Writing
Tips for Writers), and Two Cents with Lint.
He lives in Jacksonville with his wife,
three children, and two cats. You can visit
him at http://www.EdwardMBaldwin.com.

Critiques

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For
the critiques, someone other than the author
of respective works will read aloud the
submissions (up to 20 double-spaced TYPED
pages of prose, and reasonable amounts of
poetry or lyrics). Authors may not defend
their work, but they may attach questions
they would like answered (e.g., “Is the
scene on the beach convincing?” or “Did the
story get right the various references to
voltage and electricity?”). As the works are
being read, the respective authors should
listen to the words and rhythms of their
creations.

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Future
meeting dates and locales:.

Jan.
10– noon, Riverside VyStar –
Speaker: Edward Baldwin

Feb.
14– noon, Riverside VyStar –
Speaker: Carrol Wolverton

Mar.
14– noon, Riverside VyStar –
Speaker: TBA

Apr.
11 – noon, Riverside VyStar – Speaker: TBA

The
NFW meets at the VyStar Credit Union (760
Riverside Ave., next to the Fuller Warren
Bridge and Saturday’s Riverside Arts
Market).

The
meeting, which is free and open to the
public, will begin at noon and end before 3
p.m.

Parking:
VyStar requests that NFW members and guests
park on the side of the buildings to leave
spaces for their regular customers.

Keep up with the NFW

on our Facebook page

On
Facebook, join us at any time. Webmeister
Richard Levine has changed the privacy
setting of the NFW from Closed to Public.
That way, you can check out our group at
your leisure.

“Eschew
adverbs.” Does a more frequent and regular
trope of writing advice exist? Probably
not.

Well, I for one am ready
to mount a defense of the unloved adverb.
In order to do so, let me offer three
lousy adverb-heavy sentences just to set
the scene.

He jogged lazily,
unconsciously, stoically; he really
loved to jog.

“Hey, cutie,” she
said, looking over her shoulder sexily.

Longingly, he looked
after her with tears in his eyes.

None of these works. The
first overplays its hand (and ends with a
simplistic assessment besides), using
three adverbs where any one would do.
“Lazily” probably wouldn’t work, no matter
what; it’s the wrong modifier. Can one jog
for any real distance with a lazy affect?
No.

The second is the
absolute exemplar of what writing teachers
mean when they demand that adverbs be
eschewed. (Writing teachers are also
against passive voice, but that’s for
another day.) I’m borrowing this example
from Stephen King, who offers something
similar in On Writing. Whether
it’s by me or by King or even by Caspar
the Friendly Ghost, this is the sort of
sentence that must never, ever stand. Why?
Because it forces the adverb to do all the
work. If we need to know how the woman in
question looks over her shoulder, a neat,
cropped sentence like this does its work
better by either relying on context (the
dialogue, for example) or by expansion.
Here’s one solution:

“Hey, cutie,” she
said, gazing over her shoulder with a
challenging, questioning look.

Still not great, but in
concert with a proper story and the
details of adjoining sentences, this might
prove to be a keeper. (Or it might not:
revise, revise, revise. Advice so hoary
it’s got two feet in the grave, plus a
torso.)

In the third example,
above, the adverb heads up the sentence
and thereby steals its thunder. It’s more
weight than the poor word (“longingly”)
can bear. In a fairy or folk tale, this
sort of shorthand might cut the mustard,
but most mustard, once cut, prefers an
environment fraught with vivid detail, an
acknowledgment of the near infinite
variety contained in the world around us.
Consider this alteration:

The tears refused to
abate, and he swiped at them with his
wrist, wetting his cuffs. In the
distance, the old Volkswagen shrank,
signaled to turn right on Jefferson, and
vanished around the corner, its chrome
winking briefly in the sunshine.

Notice. I included an
adverb.

Adverbs modify action.
They can even modify themselves:

She plays basketball
quite gracefully.

In
this example, both “quite” and
“gracefully” are adverbs. Imagine trying
to write the dialogue for Downton
Abbey or P.G. Wodehouse while
eschewing the word “quite.”

Yep. “In the park” is an
adverbial phrase. Should we lop it off and
throw it to the hounds just because it’s
an adverb?

How about this:

After the soccer game
concludes and the players are good and
tired, we’ll go get ice cream.

The main thrust of the
sentence is, “We’ll go get ice cream.” The
rest? One long adverbial clause.

So far, we’ve modified
place and time. Let’s try something causal
(and while we’re at it, let’s try for a
better, or at least more intriguing,
sentence):

Thanks to his near
constant pounding and tattooing, Levon became a skilled,
sensitive drummer.

In this example, Levon (Helm) bangs on the
drums. Notice that, “Levon banged his drums
loudly,” is still a deplorable sentence,
but it isn’t only the adverb that’s to
blame. It’s the dullness of the
declarative. Most of the time, language
deserves a little dressing up––and that’s
really what’s at issue here. Adverbs
attached to simple sentences tend to
produce simplistic results. They thrive on
disguise, subterfuge. Burial.

Here are three more
sentences featuring adverbial clauses, the
first dealing with intent, the second with
a concession, and the third a condition:

Hoping to avoid
cracking the ice further, he proceeded
with his legs all but splayed.

“Even though you are
technically old enough to drive,

there is no way on
God’s green earth that I am getting you
a learner’s permit.”

“No, but you may have
a cookie if you eat your broccoli.”

None of these needs
revision, or the excision of their
adverbs. In fact, without them, they’d
wither and die.

Finally (adverb alert!),
I offer two sentences from a project I’m
working on now, The Copyist, a
historical novel currently at 86,000 words
and destined (so I hope) to top out around
130,000. Here are three somewhat random
selections from that book that I quite
(adverb alert!) enjoy, and that would be
reduced to ashes if I remanded their
adverbs into custody:

“Over a cold breakfast
taken in our apartments, I relayed to my
master

the odious desires of
the Portuguese ambassador.”

The experience of
being hung by one’s ankles is both
singular and decidedly unpleasant.

“It was the abbot
himself who laid on the strap, and he
showed, I think, real enthusiasm for his
task.”

Note
that only the second of these three
examples lays forth a bare “-ly”
adverb, the kind that causes every teacher
across the land to break out their dreaded
red pen. However, this adverb works (to my
mind) because adverbs tend to heighten
comedy, specifically in the case of arch
and stuffy characterizations. Of course
being hung by the ankles is unpleasant!
But the experience becomes amusing, at
least to a degree, with that extra nudge
of emphasis.

The moral of the story:
“Eschew adverbs.” Yes.

But don’t skip them out
of hand (adverb alert!). Your toolbox
would be the poorer for it. Use in
moderation, proceed with caution, and as
with words in general, write down only
those that truly need to be written.

During
a couple decades of assisting with contests
in novels and short fiction, I learned that
the Tom Swifty still exists. Back in the
Sixties, discussions about this construction
in weekly news magazines made for some fun
reading. Some aspiring writers are sharp
enough to avoid stumbling into Tom
Swifty-Land, but, when others do, the reader
laughs…and perhaps pitches the manuscript
aside. Such errors occur in dialogue tags,
and they have several red-headed siblings
and cousins in this area.

First,
let me make a confession. Early on (and
probably later than I wish to admit), I made
almost all of the errors that I will mention
in this discussion. On an occasion or two, I
had an epiphany that set me on the right
course regarding a particular problem, but,
more often, I learned what to do from John
Gardner’s “The Art of Fiction” and “On Moral
Fiction,” John Braine’s “Writing a Novel,”
workshops at writers’ conferences, and many
books and articles.

I
never read the Tom Swift novels created and
orchestrated by Edward Stratemeyer, whose
crew used the penname Victor Appleton to
tell about Tom’s adventures with motor
cycles, diamond making, photo telephones,
etc. You may go online to the Tom Swift
website and read the entire text of novels
that are in the public domain.

The
Tom Swifty may occur in a first draft when
an “-ly” adverb is used, but not when
sentences have such adverbs as “later.”

A
couple examples of Tom Swifties:

“You shock me,” Tom said
electrically.

“I’ve gained fifty
pounds this month,” he said heavily.

If
you are listing the main problem with
dialogue, you must be wary of dialogue that
simply isn’t realistic. Mark Twain
complained about James Fenimore Cooper’s
habit of having a character talk like a
country bumpkin in one chapter and then like
a gentleman in another. The best way to see
if the dialogue is believable is to read the
words aloud. If the words flow off the
tongue, then they may be natural.

Using
tags can cause problems other than the
Swifties.Some writers
try to incorporate characters’ names in the
dialogue, figuring it is a clever way to get
around cluttering the page with “he said,
she said”:

“What
are you doing, Sue?”

“I’m
thinking, George.”

“Oh,
really, Sue?”

“Sure,
George.”

What’s
wrong with this? Listen closely to two
people conversing. They seldom use each
other’s names. An exception to this rule may
be, say, a doctor talking to a confused or
semi-sedated patient:

“George, what day is
this? George, do you know where you are?”

The
actual words of people’s conversation should
only be used when they are important,
distinctive, etc. If you find that you are
putting down exactly what two people
undoubtedly would say to each other in a
certain situation, then see how much of it
is mundane. A couple of common offenses
(unless your piece is in the spirit of
“Waiting for Godot”):

“Be seeing you,” George
said.

“Bye.”

“I’ll call next week.”

“Okay.”

“Look after yourself.”

“Sure.”

Let’s
say this type of exchange occurs with George
and Sam, then with George and Sandra, and
Sam and Murphy, etc. Generally, that
repetition will cause us to put down a book
or magazine. We don’t need the same type of
humdrum closings or greetings. Hence, we
want to focus on the truly important
information from the dialogue and let the
other stuff be. There are always exceptions.
French anti-novels may deliberately contain
disconnected dialogue. If you want to write
an anti-novel, write a non-fiction book or
don’t write anything at all. It may be
helpful to stuff green beans up your nose
until the urge goes away. Similarly, some
novelists and playwrights may have scenes
with page after page of uninteresting
dialogue to show the futility and emptiness
of life. No one goes to their plays or reads
their books anyway, unless some university
class on Angst in Lit requires it. You want
your stuff to be read.

New
writers reason that the readers will tire of
continually seeing “he said” and “she said,”
so they often struggle to vary the tags with
“he insisted,” “she persisted,” “he
inquired,” “she went on to say,” etc.
Actually, the readers usually don’t notice
the tags, so it is perfectly all right to
stick with “he said” and “she said.” In a
like manner, new writers want to signal how
the words should be said, so they write “he
bellowed,” “she screamed,” “he hiccoughed,”
“she shouted,” and the like. The dialogue
itself should reveal that the words are
being bellowed, shouted, or screamed.

Often
a writer gets in a hurry and uses a “he
said” tag, puts in the dialogue, and
(absent-mindedly) ends with another “he
said” line. So when you are proofing your
work, be sure to weed out double-tags:

Tom laughed and asked,
“Why are you telling me this? You know it
amuses me except when I’m reminded of my
late wife,” he said, sorrow spreading
across his face.

Some
established writers have been embarrassed by
their earlier work, especially when they use
inappropriate tags:

He smiled, “What are you
doing tonight?”

She laughed, “I won’t be
there with you.”

When
given the chance with earlier works being
reissued, writers who care about the craft
often go in and repair their rookie flaws.

Sometimes
people use dialogue to do what should be
accomplished by the narrative. They go on
like this:

“I’ll have to leave, go
outside the apartment building, check the
weather, then stand around, and get a
taxi, if I can find one, and then--”

In
these cases, the narrative needs some
wrap-up sentences. Here is one technique for
“wrapping up” as opposed to stretching out a
lot of dialogue:

George said good-bye and
hurried out of the building.

If
something has been learned by one character
and needs to be told to, say, a desk
sergeant at a police station, a police
lieutenant, and then a captain, the
character doesn’t have to tell the
information three times. Using the above
sequence, the writer could say:

George sighed and
repeated his story for the third time.

Sometimes
empty action is stuck in the middle of
dialogue:

“I’ve had it up to
here,” George said, lighting a cigarette
and blowing smoke at the ceiling. “Up to
here, you see?” He took a long drag. “I
won’t put up with it anymore.”

Such
interludes about smoking and cigarettes may
be significant, especially if, say, George
was not much of a smoker, but, if they go on
and on as bits of business, then they signal
that the writer hasn’t really thought of
anything for the character to be doing while
talking to other characters. Find actions
that fit your respective characters, and the
dialogue-action mixture will take care of
itself. If you can’t close your eyes and see
each gesture and twitch of your character as
he or she is, say, being grilled by the
police, then you haven’t gotten a good grasp
of who your character is.

Sometimes
writers will give the quotation and then
stick on a tag as an after-thought.
Especially when the characters sound alike,
this can be extremely irritating since the
reader has to go through the quote to find
out who is talking and then perhaps to back
up to re-examine what was said. As a quick
fix, move the tag into the middle of the
spoken passage, something like the
George-section a couple of paragraphs up
from here.

Often,
a character will have lots of dialogue, but
the writer doesn’t indicate what action the
writer is performing. Here’s an example of
the problem from a film or stage script. An
actor is given a pile of new words to say in
a scene. The director and actor then ask the
writer, “Okay, what’s he DOING while he’s
saying this?”

A
key problem in some patches of dialogue is
that a writer may be trying to explain some
scientific principles (or occult beliefs,
etc.). Essentially the action has to stop
while the writer tries to educate the reader
about a Specialized Complicated Subject
(SCS). Almost invariably, the writing goes
dead. Two or three characters may be
explaining the SCS, while one character asks
questions, “Oh, why’s that? . . . Really?”
What do you do about the problem? The best
bet is to SHOW the principle or SCS in
operation. If that’s not possible, cut the
passage in half and perhaps put the other
material in an appendix.

After
Cary Grant became a major star, he had a
rule concerning the characters he played in
films. If expository dialogue had to be
used, he insisted that another character say
the lines. That probably is a good rule of
thumb when assigning dialogue to your
protagonists.

As
you study dialogue tags from the 19th
and early 20th centuries, you may
be surprised to come across “he vouchsafed”
(“to grant a special favor”) and “she
ejaculated” (the latter meaning “she blurted
out”). A Tom Swifty from those days could
have been:

“I’m sorry, Prudence,”
he ejaculated prematurely.

Ideally,
dialogue is best handled, if possible,
without using ANY dialogue tags: few or no
“he saids,” “she saids,” etc. Instead,
individual characters will have their own
dialogue paragraph. Let’s look at a passage
chosen at random from “The Circle,” a novel
of the modern Navy by David Poyer, former
Jacksonville resident and charter member of
the North Florida Writers:

“Nice
digs,” said the seaman, glancing around.
“Got your own sink and everything.”

“You
could have had a room like this.” Dan
opened the folder. “Your combined GCT/ARI
is one-twenty. There are programs to send
enlisted men to Officer Candidate School,
the ones with leadership ability.”

Lassard opened his eyes wide. Dan
saw now that there was something wrong
about their focus, as if the seaman was
looking at something in the room only he
could see. “You think Slick Lassard’s
officer material?”

“I
only said he—I said, you had the
potential….”

Notice
that Poyer only used a dialogue tag once.
When Dan is opening the folder in the second
paragraph, we know that anything said in
that section was said by Dan Lenson.

With
Ernest Hemingway and John O’Hara’s writing,
we became used to long stretches of short
sentences or phrases in dialogue. Papa or
O’Hara may have used “he said” at the first
instance, but the rest of the dialogue may
not require tags. Sometimes we may find
ourselves stopping and backing up just to
determine who is saying what. That could be
due to our inattention, but sometimes the
writer is at fault.

If
you think that a reader may have gotten
lost, go ahead and stick in “Jones said” or
“Smith asked.”

Now,
what about dialect in dialogue?

Whoa,
the proper use of dialect is a big topic, so
we’ll save that discussion for another day.

Skill
alone cannot teach or produce a great
short story, which condenses the obsession
of the creature; it is a hallucinatory
presence manifest from the first sentence
to fascinate the reader, to make him lose
contact with the dull reality that
surrounds him, submerging him in another
that is more intense and compelling.

To
check out the names of writers who were born
this month, go to this website:

http://howarddenson.webs.com/janwritersbirthdays.htm.

The
list includes novelists, poets, playwrights,
nonfiction authors, writers for the small
and silver screen, and others.

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Looking
for your favorite writer? Hit “find” at the
website and type in your favorite’s name.
Keep scrolling to find writers born in other
months.

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With
misgivings, the list generally omits
lyricists (to avoid the plethora of
garage-band guitarists who knock out a lyric
in two minutes to go with a tune). Often
lyricists are accomplished in other writing
areas and may cause their inclusion (e.g.,
Bob Dylan, Johnny Mercer, and Cole Porter).

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Unfortunately,
some writers fret about identity theft and
will only say they were born in 1972 or
whenever. Typically that means they don’t
get included on a “born this day” list.
Recommendation: Writers may wish to create a
“pen birthday”; that way, their names stay
on the public’s radar.

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If
you see that we have omitted a writer, give
us his or her name (and preferably a way to
verify the belly-button day).